Feature insight - the future of payroll
The future of the payroll profession
Julie Lock, innovation director for Mitrefinch Ltd, foresees evolution
P eople want more from their job in which they interact with their workforce. They need to think about the culture of their organisation, how can it attract the top talent, and align its culture to meet people’s needs. Modern-day employees need to feel like they are making a difference, that they are recognised and valued for their work; they need to be supported in their journey to become the very best version of themselves in and outside of work. Employers that evolve to become people focused will be the employers of choice, whereas those that don’t embrace the human experience will struggle to attract and retain the talent needed to sustain and grow their business. So, how does this impact the payroll profession? The impact on the payroll profession will be significant. The role of a payroll professional is about to evolve to the next generation of workforce managers, who are responsible for creating, implementing and managing financial well-being support and flexible working for the workforce. Working closely with business leaders to advise and design the right kind of financial well-being packages that suits the demographics of the workforce and creating flexible working packages that meet the needs of the business and the workforce. Driving the right level of communication and engagement out to the workforce; sharing knowledge and expertise to assist people to make the right choices for themselves. The new generation of payroll professionals will analyse workforce data and provide solutions to productivity issues, advise the board on strategies to enhance staff engagement, improve workforce planning for the business, and for the people improve financial well-being of the workforce and aid greater attraction and retention of top talent. than just a salary – which means employers need to change the way
To introduce these new workforce management services and business strategies, the payroll profession will require new skills, training and development. Alongside the payroll legislation and processing skill sets that exist today, payroll professionals will need to gain new skills enabling them to understand: ● productivity maximisation to create workforce strategies that meet the needs of businesses and employees ● how flexible working is much more than time and location, and how this can lead to attracting and retaining the very best talent ● how employee well-being can drive retention and productivity ● financial well-being supporting services for the workforce and how this increases engagement and reduces absenteeism. To engage the board with new innovations that will help the organisation and the workforce, payroll professionals will require new skills to deliver proposals for consideration. To do this they will need to: ● learn more about technology advancement and applications that can support required change ● carry out research and analyse data ● create solutions to problems ● produce professional business cases stating recommendations to the board ● present plans to leaders, managers and employees ● build communications strategies being support and flexible working... ...creating, implementing and managing financial well-
● use various media for communications – both social and professional ● deliver the implementation of new innovations ● project manage new schemes ● create business processes and data maps. The payroll industry will rely on the Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals to create new courses to meet the changes in the industry. But when will a payroll professional have the time to learn these new skills? Payroll operational efficiency is the key. Selecting the right solutions that will remove the mundane and repetitive tasks is critical to freeing up time to take payroll to the next level and become influencers to the board. Technology is already advancing to deliver much greater payroll processing efficiency than ever before; freeing up time to focus on financial well- being programmes of work. Time will need to be invested in obtaining a greater understanding of how the advances in technology can really help the payroll professional introduce people and productivity enhancements to their organisation. This enables the professional to understand what solutions they need to procure to enable them to free up time to learn new skills and apply them. Finally, we will see new roles within the payroll industry start to emerge providing new career development opportunities for payroll professionals. These will be defined by capability starting with payroll processing, and working towards workforce managers, directors and chief workforce officers, responsible for identifying problems and solutions, bringing business and people needs together, managing flexible working and resource optimisation, managing financial well-being, engaging with the board to drive positive change all leading to a the attraction and retention of great people. n
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| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward |
Issue 47 | February 2019
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